Computerized information systems have been employed in health care facilities to assist the health care providers in rendering patient care. In the above-identified co-pending patent application, there is disclosed a system which monitors clinical critical care pathways for patient care. The critical care pathways enable clinical orders and patient progress notes to be efficiently monitored by health care providers.
Clinical orders are entered periodically in computer terminals and the like for each patient by various health care providers such as physicians, nurses, dietitians and pharmacists. The information is then utilized to create patient pathways for the health care providers.
In such systems, there are frequently a large number of different terminals available throughout the health care facility for use by a variety of different health care providers. Should a multiple number of users desire to chart a variance on the same clinical pathway for a given patient, a conflict can arise. If one of the users requests is given priority over the others and the others are then locked out temporarily, an undesirable result occurs. In this regard, the locked out users are forced to wait pending the completion of the variance request by the user given priority. In a modern fast pace clinical care facility where time is of the essence, such delays can be not only inconvenient, but also could adversely affect the welfare of the patient or create undesirable emergency situations for the patient. Another approach could be to have all users attempting to chart on the same patient pathway at the same time, to wait in a queue. However, such an approach is not used, especially for sophisticated multi-disciplined system, where it is important to have current information available to all users at all times.
Yet another approach might be to not lock out any user. However, such an approach is not acceptable and is not used, because of the practical problems arising when entries are being made at the same time by a plurality of users. Without locking, the information would not necessarily be entered properly and incorrect results could occur. Thus, the system integrity could be compromised, and such a result is not acceptable for use by health care providers for patient care.
A further approach could be to save each variance entry, and then perform conflict checking, whereby the first to access would be preferred and permitted to be entered first. This approach is not acceptable, because the remaining users are required to wait, presumably in a queue. Also, determining the priorities for the users may be difficult for some applications.
None of the foregoing approaches are acceptable, because they all create unwanted and undesirable delays in updating patient information, and making it available to other users. Such delays cannot be tolerated in many applications where speed and accuracy are imperative. Proper patient care demands such level of interchange of information among a multi-disciplinary user group.
Thus, it would be highly desirable to have a new and improved computerized clinical care system, which facilitates multiple variance requests occurring simultaneously in the same patient information pathway.